


Lights Out, Words Gone

by kyanos



Category: DCU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-02-20 10:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2425025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanos/pseuds/kyanos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are in the midst of it, the past and future lies all undone in fragments dense with detail around them whenever they are this close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. nascence

 

"Why, Mr Kent that's a lovely shirt you've got on. Someone pick it out for you?" asks Bruce while carefully fingering the sublime bit of Italian cotton that Clark's wearing for a shirt underneath the polyester monstrosity he wears every day.

 

The lasciviousness infused in to every suggestive syllable is pure Gotham's darling but the overtly placid expression that sits so much more comfortably on the face only a hands width away from his is Bruce's alone. The blurred lines are always head ache inducing. But he tries for a winsome smile anyways.

 

"Not really. I -" he says a little hesitantly, eyes lowered for a brief second. He licks his bottom lip and raises his eyes to Bruce's again.

 

"My lover, you see, isn't very fond of how I dress. I mean it's the least I could...", he looks away, back again and adds quietly "You do what you can, right?"

 

Bruce starts. Clark closes his eyes.

 

"It's still hard at times."

 

Bruce's hand slides slowly down his forearm, each finger slowly pulling away from the material until the pad of his index finger is about to leave Clark's wrist in feather light flourish. And just then, Clark takes his hand in his own, before it does.

 

"Bruce, Bruce - are you going somewhere. Leaving?"

 

The brief flash of surprise in his eyes quietens him a little.

 

His fingers find the tie, the material like water in his fingers. As he hooks his fingers in to the simple knot, he raises his eyes to look at Bruce. His breastbone heaving gently under the base of his palm, warm and delicate like holding a bird between cupped hands.

 

There is some colour to his lips now, a pale lilac slowly being taken over a heady deep red spreading from where Bruce's lips meet. He presses his own to the ones in front of him. Arms gently slung over Bruce's shoulder, his, resting curved around Clark's waist. Time doesn't slow down painfully, neither does it lurch forward in startling gasps, tonight it flows smooth. Measured in even heartbeats, which when rise, rise steadily like moonrise in winter. Someone heaves an immeasurably small sigh and fingers slide into soft hair and arms go tight around shoulders and waists. Bruce's mouth is lovely, wonderful heat and a hint of steely coolness from the winter days, both comforting and refreshingly novel.

 

Then slowly, like rising from a deep dream, the world crystallises into clarity. A little adjustment of focus lenses aligning in a viewfinder and the bleeding colours shrink back into their shapes. Everything feels more distinct. Each eyelash on Bruce's eyelids is a sharp splinter of obsidian, the cut of his jaw is straight and firm underneath his gently skimming fingertips.

 

His eyes tarry and all he can see for a moment is a startling shade of red. The bloom on Bruce's face magnified until bright ruby is all that there is. The faint ruddiness on his knuckles a sharp vermilion. Then blood, wet and alive just underneath the faint layer of skin. A heaving, lurching sea of crimson and instantly his eyes latch on to life again; blood cells nothing but a wide expanse of trembling, folded velvety red. The touch of sure fingers through his hair brings him back, and he is returned to the powdery red on Bruce's cheek, so rare to see it on the tips of those cheek bones that he thinks if he touches his fingers to it, the tips will come away stained. It's a small marvel. He raises his lips to where it is the brightest, a tentative shade of pale rose at the deepest and when he pulls away his heart is heavy. Wool soaked in water.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the oneshot I was referring into in 'Dizzy with your presence' and it's been such a long time but I'm still not done struggling to put it together. I've decided to tackle it scene by scene instead of as a whole. I hope the picture that emerges as the pieces come together is as mesmerising as the one that compelled me to begin this in the first place.
> 
> The very first piece is the most harmless piece of them all - nonetheless may it please.


	2. reflections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A soliloquy from the outside.

 

His heart feels empty, oh so achingly empty. Over the years, he has carried many things in the faithful organ. Indelible anger, the roaring undercurrent to all, grief and sorrow, the insurmountable twins, despair bleak and sharp, and on its heels loneliness, bitter like unripe oranges. The pinpricks of joy too, brief and fleeting like star bursts - brilliant while they last, intense and bright but ephemeral; always out of his grasp. Nothing he can hold in his hands. As if the landscape of his heart could sustain something as delicate and permanent as the blossom of happiness.

 

 

 

He is all of them. Brucie the shadow on the water, Batman the single monotone of righteous fury, carefully channeled and unleashed, Bruce always there, always hidden, and all the people he is between them. Revealed fully they all carry his colour.

 

Those looks of mingled shock and confusion he receives when sometimes he is forced to pull the cloth back...

 

Unerringly leading the rich and famous away from cruelty with a flippant word and glimpsing a blurred image of his father, his grandmother in the befuddlement of lined and old faces dotting the glittering crowd. When somehow it is him who is handing weeping, soot streaked children to cowering parents or shifting earth and rock to find a teammate who has been buried under a sudden avalanche of their mistakes whose eyes widen with terror instead of relief when they see it's him who is pulling them out. Whenever his rare smiles are just a little wider than usual at home or when he let's his frustration come out as it will unfettered and receives the exact same looks of apprehension either way. Even worse when his concern is uncontainable and he gets a hastily fired mission report - makes him weary of the invisible lines dividing him up.

 

The strain, at times, leaves his heart gouged out - like a limb hacked to the bone. So tender to feel with, an open wound in his chest. The emptiness then is not lightness, it weighs on his soul and each breath is sucked in through lungs crushed under mountains. Those are the days he gives himself over to work, completely running on autopilot, his body working like the perfectly honed instrument it is - no friction, everything done just so. People shy away from his those days, those days he doesn't have to say anything. Criminals and policemen shrink from him alike. Gordon told him about it once, after. Something in the rigidity of his gait, the white of his eye slits magnified by an indefinable emptiness from within. The silence suffocating and heavy, his voice if drawn from him, the rasp the sound of doom of the most ancient of predators whose rumbling roar was the very shaking of the earth. Inescapable and reeking of death.

 

 

 

The longer he looked at this particular problem, probed at it cautiously the bigger it became and squirmed like a serpent in his chest. So he started looking away. The size diminished to a point eventually but it still remained, waiting for him to stumble here or to look for a fraction too long and it would explode in gargantuan growth, engulfing all. It wasn't one of the places he had searched for a solution but it became apparent that Clark soothed it a little - both of them unaware of the happening. He started looking carefully then.

 

A skimming touch to the air above his shoulder would ease the pain a little. A surprising smile at something he said - all crinkled eyes and the easy upturn of the lips made the world glow for days. The days when he would come and stand next to him, almost no space between their shoulders the world he carried inside him would seem a distant memory. Or those times when he desired no one's companionship but his own (the nuances of this took the longest to figure out) the quiet deliberate shape of absence he left behind could have his thoughts wrangled in sedately.

 

Sometimes. In a life where every second was crammed to bursting with a million things all vying for his attention, even the clipped shavings of time that spaced the seconds apart were all gathered up and put to some use such blessings always made him think of how the blessed felt when being granted benediction. He had nothing to draw from his own life. The feeling of utter calm and the world contained.

 

 

 

His own time is one long roll of finite heartbeats and these little tastes of timelessness. Of what it means to truly see the world from the outside, to be on the fringes of time is one of the few ways he can sink his fingers into what it feels to be an anchored diamond in a sea of flowing powdered charcoal. He realises then that just because Clark glows at the smallest looks of understanding from him or gets that inhuman lassitude to his gait for weeks on end if a careless line of his is taken as comprehensibility, doesn't actually mean he understands the man to the extent Clark's generosity would have him believe.

 

 

 

The thought that he has offered so little, can offer so little and still receive so much is... upsetting. It's a strange betrayal of sorts. He knows the man can't help it but he thought for a moment, foolishly, that he was in some measure the same to Clark as he is to him. He tries to be attentive when he can and the veritable flood of warmth he gets in return is bewildering each time.

 

It becomes a little gratifying too, over time. He doesn't care that the order of the world demands that feelings are not to be understood. How can he be happy to drive such a harsh bargain when for the rarest of moments he does actually care? He shifts from one possibility to another, going through each action and word and gesture swiftly to gauge the man's reactions and bring them to some order.

 

Being drawn in to the point distraction really wasn't something he was going for with this.

 

 

 

The tangle remains, clear and obvious and slowly turns to a testament of trust rather than a thorn.

 

A time comes when the need for pretext flakes away to nothing. Not the world hurtling in to an abrupt ending. Not the fear when one of them would oblige death with an intimate waltz. Neither the much rarer where the universe would lazily conspire to put them together. Nor the one where they force themselves through it, an inevitability which demands acceptance rather than resistance. They come, still all coarsely tied up in their lives.

 

For once they truly are with each other, their demons and angels, dreams and fears and past and future floating gently in their shared solitude. He remembers being keenly reminded of the opening up of a healing laceration and the initial sharp stabs of pain to his core. Then it dulls and reaches for recovery when in the open instead of hidden tight and bleeding under layers of gauze. He cannot see it unfolding in his mind no matter what permutations of circumstance he attempts, but while struggling to find a situation where he can somehow know that it will work - he feels it just a little and for the first time allows it to be enough.

 

 

 

He knows there aren't any winds more favourable or waters smoother than this or if there are he doubts he would want it as much. This man, so much more than extraordinary flesh and blood right by his side. Both captured rimmed in gold with their lives spread around each themselves in each other’s eyes.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am aware that this isn't a particularly popular mode of writing but I don't think I'm skillful enough to express all of this smoothly with dialogue and plot while retaining the flow and succinctness. This is very self-indulgent really. Still as always I hope some of you at the very least can take a little bit of something good away from this. The next chapter, if the bloody thing manages to be cooperative is the complete opposite, so if someone is still interested in following my mish mash of styles to the bitter end you have something else to look forward to. Meta-ish.
> 
> Thank you all for leaving Kudos on the previous chapter - keeps me from growing a little too wild if I know I'm not chucking my words into the void.


	3. Exchanges

 

Clark sees evening settle on Metropolis from the tall windows of his office. The powdery bruised darkness slowly bleeding in to the bright, clean lights... turning reds to a mottled vermillion, whites a slowly burning sulphur, the sharp lines of the buildings blurring in to the dense night-time air... His eyes linger on soft corners where light is smudged by shadow. Disorientated he shuts his eyes to clear the feeling of a mist in his eyes. Nebulous November curls and settles around his vision when he opens them.

 

A quiet sigh and a couple of heartbeats later he turns away from the city, towards his desk and halfheartedly wills the jumbled conclusion of his piece to come together on the screen. He leans back in his stiff chair and the emptiness of the usually loudly bustling office pours distance in to the seconds, unwinding them so. Slipping away effortlessly slow, impossibly smooth silk slinking through his fingers. It's tempting to give a part of his mind over to the gliding movement, for a moment he hesitates and thinks of his work. A long slumbering wave of weariness yawns in him and even then, half an ear still to the streets and the sky - he gives in to the feeling. The cacophony of the whole world whittles down to a handful. The darkness spilling around him suffused with the warmth of the long set sun, each muscle sighing coolly into ease,  his ears picking up on the quiet cadence of his heart beats, the rush of warm red blood in his eyes, the dry smell of carpet cleaner a quiet undernote to the cool notes of printer ink and the astringent ones of burnt coffee...

 

A door opens, ushering wet night into the unlit hallways. It's laced with a heady, sour-sweetness that stokes a longing in him just before coming in full force. Eyes still closed, he lets his surprise turn him mouth upwards into a smile. He keeps his eyes closed for a moment longer, identifying Bruce with other senses now - fresh pine from the brief chase in Alaska almost an afternoon ago, crisp clack of wingtips on the floor, the restrained gait dulling the sharpness ... When he opens his eyes, there he is. Stood nearly in front of him but only just out of sight. He twists slightly in his chair until he can see him properly.

 

"Didn't think I'd be hearing from you tonight," he says and lets his senses slowly narrow until he can see full shapes instead of buzzing particles and hear sounds as they are instead of recognising them by waves disturbing the surrounding air, "much less seeing you here after the thing with the trees".

 

He gets raised eyebrows, he's sure the height and severity of this particular arch implies incredulity... hm, no slightly pursed mouth - exasperation then? Or is he only pretending exasper-

 

"I thought I was the one with "avoidant tendencies"," says Bruce and derails him entirely.

 

He thought they were past this and the frustrated confusion must have shown in his eyes because:

 

"If my being was going to be such an inconvenience," the rusty thread of emotion woven through his words thinning with each passing word, "you should've said." comes the reply, entirely flat now.

 

The glossy black orchids gleam the slick silver of gunmetal between them, an offering before, now something else entirely. Still he is here and really his own growing confusion had to be absolutely glaring to merit an addendum without prodding, uncomfortable silences and inscrutable looks.

 

He slides his gaze away to the shadowed wall just to the right of the sharp, shards of Bruce's shadow.

 

"I just meant I was surprised to see you here," he says almost tiredly.

 

Bruce goes completely still and Clark can almost see him turning away leaving the air torn up with angry words and more. He raises his hand to halt him and his father must've been real pleased with his ploughing for the new season - his luck somehow prevails Bruce remains where he is. His heart clenches and the stiffness endures. It would be Bruce, he thinks, to sharpen very movement and utterance on the whetstone of reason and then to walk a path distinct as blood on snow known to him only. To others his path is terrifyingly random, sharp turns and cliff edges shrouded in wispy mist.

 

If he lets him stand untouched a moment longer he's certain Bruce will turn to impenetrable granite right in front of him.

 

"Surprised, yes," the fleshy green stems in Bruce's arms are almost crushed at the words and he hurries to add, "but pleased."

 

He takes two quick strides and gently pries the flowers from his arms before the orchids come apart altogether. The long dark stems hold them in a strange deadlock as neither has relinquished them or taken them entirely.

 

This close, the shadows, he thinks, have always complemented Bruce almost like they are in his power. Tonight is no different, they cling to him and he cuts a soft smudge of a sooty silhouette in the half light - the soft curve of his mouth flat but not hard, powdery snow melting in his smooth hair leaving it with a rich metallic luster.

 

Bruce shifts his gaze towards the dimly glowing city and moves away with an abrupt step, his present delivered. He looks almost bereft without his hands cradling the deep green stems of the fleshy flowers.

 

He ventures into the slack silence, "I didn't think I'd get them back."

 

"You do now."

 

Bruce is still turned away from him. He feels the ghostly curve of an uncalled smile slipping across his face like a breeze in spring.

 

"Yeah, I do." He's a little taken back at the pain and sadness stealing into his words. His eyes take on the shade of the black night growing darker each moment in his heart. It's not as though they're looking at each other, he lets them darken.

 

"You didn't have to-"

 

Bruce turns then, finally. Looks at him.

 

Clark drops his head a little before their eyes can meet and clears his to meet the one awaiting his own.

 

He holds himself warily and Clark just wants it to end. Bruce is the tightrope walker, he moves forward by stretching lines until they almost snap, swinging in whiplash sharp movements through life. His own flight is always a glide, smooth arcs and steady rises and falls even at his most reckless. What passes for the usual for the other man is in his life a spiral of uncontrolled movement. So whenever they meet halfway, one grapples with a storm while the other walks serenely.

 

"I wanted to." He takes a deep breath, the crackle of a wind blowing through frosted over trees. The uneven quality of the voice jars him a little.

 

There is an expectant quality to the air. It dies slowly and turns empty as neither says a thing and they part. Wordless. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the oneshot I was referring into in 'Dizzy with your presence' and it's been such a long time but I'm still not done struggling to put it together. I've decided to tackle it scene by scene instead of as a whole. I hope the picture that emerges as the pieces come together is as mesmerising as the one that compelled me to begin this in the first place. 
> 
> The very first piece is the most harmless piece of them all - nonetheless may it please.  
> 


End file.
